Assessing the consumers’ attitude towards sustainability on purchase decisions in personal care products in Western Province, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Environmental problems are rapidly increasing in the global context. This has urged many businesses to think about sustainable aspects to incorporate in their supply chain activities. With rapid external environmental changes, businesses have to be extra attentive on how consumer purchasing patterns have changed in current environment. Personal care product category is one of the most highly valued product categories under Fast moving consumer goods segment. Several international businesses who are in personal care products manufacturing have initiated to combine sustainable elements in their product features whereby consumer attraction has gained and rapidly changed purchasing behavior towards sustainable products. With this understanding, this study is analyzing how consumers’ attitude on sustainable aspects has impacted on purchase decisions in personal care category in Western province Sri Lanka. This research was performed using the survey method with an online structured questionnaire. Data were gathered from 325 number of participants who purchase or potential to purchase personal care products in Western province Sri Lanka. In this cross sectional study under the quantitative approach, structural equation modeling was mainly applied for the analysis. In prior to the actual data collection, a pre-study and a pilot study were conducted. The statistical software IBM SPSS and AMOS were used for data analysis. As per the results, the factors awareness about sustainability, green advertising and beliefs & attitudes were identified as factors which are having a significant positive impact on purchase decision. Moreover, among those factors, green advertising has a strong positive impact on purchase decisions than other factors. Based on these findings, personal care products manufacturing can improve consumer purchase decisions positively by making consumers aware about sustainability and its importance, promote product features through green advertising, and change consumer thinking including beliefs and attitudes towards sustainability. Findings of this research are helpful to contribute towards sustainability to reduce environmental problems.